People walking San Clemente’s shoreline are finding a little unexpected Christmas cheer at Calafia Beach – a decorated tree, set up on the sand.

Although you wouldn’t know it from looking at the tree, someone stole its solar-powered lights, said Debbie Stetson, who put up the tree and the lights last week.

The tree is lavishly decorated, Stetson said, as people have been leaving ornaments. “It has exploded with ornaments,” she said. Someone left stockings. A toy monkey. Stetson said she has seen people posing for pictures beside the tree on the beach.

This is the second year that Stetson put a tree on the beach. Last year, five days after Christmas, someone walked away with the ornaments, she said. In that case, the takers may have figured the tree was abandoned. Not this year, with Christmas still to come. Stetson said she was saddened by the theft, but the response from passersby has been rewarding.

Fred Swegles grew up in small-town San Clemente before the freeway. He has covered the town since 1970. Today he covers San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano. He was in the second graduating class at San Clemente High School, after having spent the first two years of high school in double sessions at historic Capistrano Union High School in San Juan. When the new high school opened, he became first sports editor of the school paper, The Triton. He studied journalism and Spanish at USC on scholarship, graduating with honors. Was sports editor of the Daily Trojan. Surfed on the USC surf team. (High school surfing didn't exist back then.) With the Sun Post, he began covering competitive surfing from the mid-1970s, with the birth of the the modern world tour and the origins of high school surf teams. He got into surf photography and into world travel. Has surfed on six continents (not Antarctica). Has visited 11 San Clementes. Has written photo-illustrated profiles on most of them, with more in the works.